What Condition Will Your Body Be In When Illness Comes?

We often talk about healthy behaviors as a way to prevent disease. Exercise, nutritious food, adequate sleep, and other positive lifestyle habits can certainly help reduce the risk of many health conditions but there is another benefit we don't talk about nearly enough: the condition your body is in if disease occurs anyway.

Imagine two people diagnosed with the same serious illness. One has spent years walking consistently, maintaining muscle strength, staying active, and supporting their cardiovascular health. The other enters the diagnosis already significantly deconditioned. Their diagnosis may be the same, but their physiological and functional starting points may be very different.

That matters because illness, surgery, hospitalization, and medical treatments can take a tremendous toll on the body. Greater cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength, mobility, balance, and functional capacity can provide more reserve to work with when the body is placed under stress. It doesn't guarantee an easier course or better outcome, but having more capacity going in can matter.

Healthy behaviors aren't valuable only because they may reduce the risk of disease. They're also valuable because they can influence the condition in which we meet disease if it occurs.

Build your reserve while you can. Your future body may need it.

Donna Medina, MS
Board-Certified Clinical Exercise Physiologist